1) JP Morgan was the only one of the five largest US investment banks to reduce the compensation of its senior staff in Europe in 2012. The firm paid 126 senior staff an average of £2.09 million ($3.4 million) each in 2012. The previous year, 119 staff received an average of £2.26 million.

While it would be too much of a stretch to tie this fall in remuneration levels to a single event, it is worth nothing that between April and May 2012, JP Morgan’s London-based chief investment office racked up losses of more than $6.2 billion.

Morgan Stanley paid 113 code staff an average of £1.16 million each. This was up from the average of £1.04 million paid to each of 109 code staff in 2011. Citigroup paid 190 code staff an average of £1.51 million each. This was also up from the average of £1.34 million paid to 169 people the previous year.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch paid 121 code staff £180.9 million, an average of £1.5 million each. The total amount was down from the £186.7 million paid in 2011. But that was divided between more senior staff – 126 – meaning average pay was £1.48 million in 2011 and rose slightly in 2012.

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This is all particularly noteworthy given that average pay per employee across all staff at these banks is falling. Could it be that US banks are paying their most senior staff more at the same time as they pay their more junior staff less?

3) Code staff at Goldman Sachs appear to have enjoyed the biggest increase in compensation between 2011 and 2012. Using Goldman Sachs’ share price on December 31, 2012 as a proxy for the value of restricted stock units it awarded (and that’s not a guarantee the bank calculates it that way), the 115 code staff received average compensation of $4.67 million. Applying the same methodology to the 2011 filing gives an average figure of $2.64 million for each of the 95 code staff that year.

This means that average compensation for code staff in Goldman Sachs’s UK operations rose by around three-quarters between 2011 and 2012. It rose 1% at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, 3% at Morgan Stanley and 12% at Citigroup. Meanwhile, average compensation fell by 7% at JP Morgan.

4) Many have predicted that the impending bonus cap for bankers in the European Union will lead to an increase in fixed pay. That certainly didn’t happen in 2012 (although that was around the time that the cap was first mooted and the proposal may have not yet influenced compensation policies).

Fixed pay at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch actually fell in 2012. Variable pay also fell at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley; was broadly flat at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and rose at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs (where the average bonus among code staff more than doubled in 2012).

5) All of the above indicates that banks are going to have to get creative to meet the bonus cap this year.

The rule kicks off this month and will influence packages paid in spring 2015. A draft released in December showed the standards to be less onerous than feared, but bonuses for code staff will still be restricted to one-times base pay, rising to two times if shareholder approval is secured.

That’s likely to pose a problem for Wall Street banks. Look at our calculation of Goldman Sachs’ average code staff package of $4.67 million in 2012, for example. Salaries for those staff would have to rise to $1.56 million for the same total compensation payout to be possible, more than double the average base salary of around $750,000 in 2012. And even that’s only if shareholders approve.

The alternative—and more likely—scenario is that banks will introduce “allowances”, say pay consultants. These allowance are non-pensionable, aren’t in the employee’s basic contract, and are more easily scrapped than salary. But they do count towards fixed remuneration when the bonus is calculated.

Jon Terry, global financial services HR consulting leader at PwC, said that looking at the numbers, individuals moving from a $500,000 salary to a salary of $500,000 and an allowance of $1 million would become reasonably commonplace for London bankers in 2014.

“Having allowances at the same level or higher than the level of salaries will not be uncommon for some code staff, particularly the front office code staff,” he said.

Now, before we leave it there, it is worth mentioning a few things about the numbers you’ve just read.

The first is that they are not new. They were published towards the end of last year.

The second is that the analysis is new. Why’s that?

Well, under Basel III regulations, banks must reveal how much they pay code staff. But all the banks report the figures for these staff slightly differently. This leaves the information open to interpretation.

So, what are the grey areas?

Firstly, Goldman Sachs reports the figures in US dollars while JP Morgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch all report in sterling. If you convert, for example, BAML’s 2011 and 2012 numbers into dollars then it looks like compensation for code staff fell in 2012; in sterling it rose. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we’re sticking with the currency that the banks chose to report in.

Secondly, some of the banks also report deferred remuneration from previous years. But this should not be included in the 2012 compensation figures. Doing so results in money being double, triple and even quadruple-counted as share options and deferred cash bonuses vest over one, two and three years.

Thirdly, Goldman Sachs (again) does not give a monetary value to the equity portion of variable pay. Instead it just reports how many “restricted stock units” it awarded. The bank’s share price at the end of the relevant year is understood to be a good proxy – although it must be highlighted that this is an estimate.